Can you move to London with no money?

It’s that time of year when many final year students graduate, have a bit of a holiday and then think ‘yikes, what next?’, so the question that we’re asking and answering is ‘Can you move to London with no money?’.

Let’s look at what you’ll need money for when you first move to London.

Accommodation

The biggest wallet zapper of all is the cost of your accommodation, whether it be short-term accommodation such as a hostel, or moving into shared rental accommodation, where you’ll usually need to pay rent and a deposit up front. Of course assuming that we’re not referring to park benches, then a way to avoid paying any accommodation costs when you first move to London is to take up rent-free residence on the sofa or in the spare room of a very understanding friend, family member or romantic interest. If you’re lucky enough to be able to choose this as an option, then thank your lucky stars and make sure that you don’t take advantage. Keep up more than your fair share of domestic duties to keep your hosts happy whilst you’re in residence and be extremely proactive in looking for work and alternative accommodation so that they don’t start to panic that this situation is forever.

Travel

Getting around London can be expensive, but it all really depends on where you’re based and where you need to get to. If you happen to be staying somewhere fairly near Central London and you’re interviewing for jobs and visiting agencies also in Central London, then you may possibly be able to get by without paying for public transport. Instead, if you have a bike, then you could cycle or even walk if you’re really energetic. But if not, then you’ll need to cough up a bit of cash for an Oyster card. You can purchase this in advance of moving to London – visit tfl.gov.uk/oyster for details – basically you pay £5 deposit for a pre-pay Oyster card, then add some credit to it and you can use it until you run out of credit.

Food and Drink

Unless you have exceptionally understanding hosts, you’ll also require some money to pay for food and drink to keep yourself functioning! If you genuinely don’t have any money until you find work, then you’re probably going to have to use a credit card or take out a small loan until you do find a job in London. Not ideal, but neither is starving.

These are the 3 main areas that you’ll require finances for when you first move to London. Of course, the way to give yourself a head start in obtaining money for work is to have started your job searching before you arrive in London.

If you’re UK-based (or from overseas) then the easiest thing to do is to upload your C.V to Monster which is totally free to do and makes your information available to headhunters from big London firms.

If you’re from overseas, then before you leave home you should definitely take a look at this Kickstart package, which as well as providing you with C.V and job assistance, also sorts you out with a UK bank account, National Insurance number, UK SIM card, free accommodation assistance and loads of other helpful services.

So in answer to the question, ‘can you move to London with no money?’, the answer is a technical ‘yes’. Given the right situation and some extremely helpful contacts, you could just about survive in London for a short while with no startup funds. Is it advisable? Probably not. It’s almost always a good idea to have some savings, however minimal, before you relocate to any new location, and London is no exception to this logic.

Relocate to London in 2011

It’s the New Year and there’s nothing like a cold January morning to give you a kick up the backside and start making some plans for the blank canvas that is 2011. Now the festivities have well and truly subsided, it’s time to start thinking about your move to London.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a quiet time of year for people moving in and out of London, it’s actually quite busy. Australians and New Zealanders tend to move to London during their summer (which is now), so you’ll need to be on top of your game in order to get ahead of the competition and secure the best accommodation and temp jobs.

Accommodation

The first thing you need to decide is where you want to live in London. This will probably be determined by a number of factors, such as your budget, proximity to potential workplace and where your existing friends live.
If you’re not sure about residential areas of London, then please take a look at our North London, South London, East London and West London pages.

Next up, it’s really wise to place an ad for FREE with Easyroommate, who are an excellent flatmate finding service. You can request a room, or search for available rooms all over London.

Jobs

Totaljobs.com have stated that the first quarter of 2011 could be tough for jobseekers, due to ‘external influences like the VAT increase and continued instability in European markets’ meaning that recruiters may play it safe until they can see what is happening with our economy.

This may sound quite bleak, but what it actually means, is that there could well be a rise in temp work available in London. Please look at our Working in London page for information on how to approach working as a ‘temp’ in London.

In the meantime though, there’s nothing to stop you from looking for a permanent job. There may be less jobs available but companies are still hiring. For those of you who are ‘Apprentice’ fans, take a leaf out of runner-up Chris Bates’s book, who prior to appearing on the show managed to secure a job as an investment banker with JP Morgan after completing his degree at Nottingham University.

In order to get ahead of the game, make sure your C.V is totally and utterly polished and upload it for FREE to Monster. It’s a great service, where as well as searching for available vacancies, you can include your C.V in the pool which recruiters look at to hand pick the best of the best to invite to interviews for jobs which they don’t even bother advertising.
It’s a bit of a pain, but only approximately 1/3 of London jobs are officially advertised. The rest are filled by recruitment agencies, word of mouth and candidate selection sites such as Monster.

We’ve given you some starting points here for your move to London in 2011. Happy New Year from everyone here at Moove2London and we wish you the best of luck for your move.

How to get a graduate job in London

Many of you will have completed your university degrees this summer and will be heading to London in search of graduate work, but as you may have heard in that refreshingly depressing way the media likes to tell us things… graduate jobs are hard to come by at the moment.

So here are some tips to increase your chances of getting a graduate job in London at the moment – it’s not all doom and gloom we promise!

Your C.V
Seriously, we can’t recommend enough the importance of uploading your C.V to Monster. It is TOTALLY FREE to create a profile and upload your C.V to their database where you will a)get to search for jobs in the industry you’re interested in but even better than this… b) top graduate recruiters use this database to search for the best graduate candidates to fill their positions. Imagine a scenario where a graduate vacancy has become available for a firm that you’re interested in, but the position is never actually advertised because their graduate head-hunters use Monster’s database to handpick candidates that they’re interested in interviewing. Why on earth wouldn’t you want to make yourself available for selection? Upload your C.V now.

Masters Degrees
Ok, this is a difficult one and is definitely not something we would recommend that EVERYONE does because of the sheer expense of Masters degrees and the importance of gaining relevant work experience. But for some professions, it really does pay to have a Masters degree under your belt. Think about it – if you’re applying for a graduate job and you’ve got a 2:1 or even a 1st class honours degree, how many other candidates do you think are applying with identical qualifications to you? Quite possibly hundreds. But the number of candidates with both Bachelors and Masters degrees will be substantially less. Talk to your careers advisors and people within your chosen industry for some advice.

Careers Fairs
Get yourself to some careers fairs. A great one which is coming up is the Guardian’s Graduate Fair which is free and takes place on 19th October, 2010 at the Business and Design Centre in Islington. You can already pre-register if you’re interested.
But this is only one of many careers events.
A great tip for those who have their heart set on working for one specific company, is to find out which career events the company recruiters will be attending. Then make sure you visit the company stand at as many of these events as you possibly can. Get to know the recruiters and make sure you take copies of your C.V with you and are fully prepared for informal interviews. Some may see this as stalking, but it’s an incredibly effective way to get yourself on the company radar!

Get inventive
We’ve thrown this one in for fun really, but some of you will have heard the story of David Rowe, who walked around the streets of London for 5 days wearing a sandwich board which read ‘Job wanted. History Graduate, University of Kent. Interview Me. Prepared to work first month FREE. Then hire or fire me. Thanks for looking, David.’ The stunt reportedly generated over 250 enquiries and he was consequently hired by JCDecaux.
Another similar story involved Alex Kearns (a 23 year old graduate) who was part of the Plinth Project in Trafalgar Square. He stood on top of the plinth for one hour with a sign reading ‘Give me a job’. He has since been hired by a London business consultancy who were impressed with his initiative.

Get some relevant work experience
When you apply for a graduate job, the recruiters aren’t going to just be blown away by your impressive qualifications and extra-curricular activities, they’re often going to require evidence of some relevant work experience within the industry that you’re applying to work in.
If your experience thus far, is a little thin on the ground, then it’s time to get some under your belt, particularly if you’re not doing any sort of work at the moment. Work experience might seem like it’s for kids and the fact that you’re not earning anything can be a little soul-destroying, but it won’t be forever. Make the most of an unpaid internship by learning as much as you can about your chosen profession, expanding your network of contacts (very important in business) and if you’re very impressive you might even be taken on as a permanent member of staff.
An excellent system to use when looking for work experience is the WEXO system.

Move to London
It’s a case of Catch 22 – we understand that. You don’t want to move here until you’ve got a job to pay the bills, but trust us, it’s really difficult to make the most of every available graduate opportunity or to be taken seriously if you don’t actually live in London or in the commutable vicinity. Remember that you can always take a survival job in London to help pay the bills whilst you’re searching for a more serious permanent job.

Follow all of the advice above and you’ll hopefully be setting your alarm for your first day at work in no time at all. Try and remain positive throughout the job-seeking process and don’t let a working day go by without taking a pro-active step (however small) to securing your dream job.

Ways to blend in as a Londoner

When you first move to London, some of you might take to it like water off a duck’s back, others of you may feel that you stick out like a sore thumb.
We’ve created a list of ways to blend in as Londoner, so you don’t feel out of your depth. Many of them are related to the public transport system and some should be taken as being tongue in cheek, but we’ll let you try and work out which are which!

• Don’t wander around obviously clutching your A-Z. If you need to carry it, then try and be discreet about it. Or if you have an I-phone, you could just use that instead to get about!
• Try and hide the fact that your snot is currently black and sooty – we promise it’ll go away.
• Get an Oyster card – real Londoners don’t buy paper tickets, they’re more expensive.
• Never stand still on the left side of an escalator – always move to the right. In fact, most Londoners are often in a rush, so feel free to charge up and down the left side of the escalator.
• Always avoid eye contact with strangers and don’t even think about exchanging niceties – we don’t do that in London or else people might mistake us for psychopaths.
• Walk quickly everywhere and try and look like you’re extremely angry at all times.
• In a supermarket, use the self-service checkout – remember that you’re in a hurry and don’t have time for queues.
• Don’t scream in alarm at the tiny amount of change you’ll get when you hand over a fiver for a pint of beer
• Stop carrying cash altogether and rely on using cards everywhere
• Scream like billio if you see a mouse in your house, but don’t bat an eyelid if you see 10 of them whilst you’re waiting for a tube
• Roll your eyes and be completely devoid of sympathy if someone commits suicide by jumping on the tube tracks and ruins your journey across town
• Start sniggering (and/or exercise an eye roll) if your train is delayed or cancelled due to leaves on the line or the wrong type of snow
• Always carry Nurofen, Berocca tablets, eyedrops and chewing gum with you on Friday mornings to help you deal with a crazy Thursday night out.
• Learn the names and respective colours of the tube lines. Nothing will make you stand out more than if you say you’re taking the yellow line to work. IT’S CALLED THE CIRCLE LINE!
• Don’t bother going out in Central London unless it’s for work drinks. Instead find the best pub in your new area and claim it as your local.
• Start acting like the rest of the UK doesn’t exist

PS We didn’t mean the last one – we’re not originally from London either!!!

How to create a great flatshare ad

If you’re looking for rental accommodation and housemates when you first move to London, then we thoroughly recommend that you use a flatmate finding service such as Easyroommate .

With Easyroommate and other flatmate finding services, when you sign up you’ll need to create a profile. Much like meeting people in person, first impressions count and so you’ll need to make sure that you’re showing the best version of yourself to those scouring the database.

Here are some tips that you might want to bear in mind when putting a profile together.

• Where possible, add a photo of yourself. Easyroommate’s research shows that you’re 3 times more likely to be contacted if you add a photo of yourself. It’s not about people judging whether you’re attractive or not, but it is about people sussing out whether they think that you’re their type of person or not. Harsh, but true.
• If you’re going to include a photo in your profile, then be careful about which one you pick. That picture of you dressed up as Frankenstein at last years’s Halloween party, might have been hilarious, but it probably won’t do wonders for attracting potential housemates.
• This is basic, but make sure your ad is written with good spelling and grammar. Some people will judge you if you spell words incorrectly and skip on to the next ad. If you were never a spelling bee champ and aren’t blessed with a strong vocabulary, then turn to a friend or family member who is and ask them to read over your flatmate ad before you post it.
• Sell yourself as a housemate. If you’re a great cook who is going to make a mean Sunday roast then say so. You need to let people know what will be so great about living with you.
• Honesty is important. If you’re thoroughly opposed to living with couples, smokers or pets, then say so in your ad so that you’re not wasting anyone’s time, including your own!
• This isn’t a dating site, but it’s not a dissimilar process. You want your ad to stand out from the crowd, but for the right reasons. Try and come across as friendly – a little humour never hurts either.
• Most flatmate finding services allow you to start by signing up for a free basic profile. Try using this for a week or so and see how you get on. If you haven’t had much luck, then it’s usually worthwhile upgrading to a premium membership for a small fee which will allow you many more options, such as being able to contact everyone on the database and including a phone number if you wish.
Tags: Easyroommate, flatmate finding service, flatshare, housemate, move to london, rental accommodation
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Interview with a newcomer in London

This week, we’ve caught up with a relative newcomer to London. Chris is 23 and moved to London after university.

Hi Chris, where are you from?
I’m from York.

How long ago did you move to London?
About ten months ago – I finished at uni last May and then chilled out for a bit, went travelling to South America for a month and then thought I’d better get on with finding a job!

Why did you decide to move to London?
I had a great time at uni in Liverpool, it’s a great city, but about half way through our final year, me and my mates realised that no-one who we were mates with was really going to carry on living there and the general consensus was that we’d move to London because that’s where most of the graduate jobs seem to be. Also, none of us had lived in London before and it seemed like the most buzzing place to be.

Do you feel that you made the right decision in moving to London?
Definitely. Like I said, no-one was staying back in Liverpool and I didn’t really feel like I wanted to go home to my parents house in York. Living in London is amazing. My friends are all here, I’m single so love meeting new people in bars all over town.
Moove2London says: – see our Dating in London page for great dating tips, London dating locations and online dating site reviews.

How easy was it for you to find work?
I applied for a graduate job towards the end of my final year at uni and after a million interviews, I got accepted in a graduate accountancy position. It took a long time because of the process, but my other friends all managed to get good jobs fairly easily. I’m not saying the recession doesn’t exist but it doesn’t appear to have hit London as hard as other areas of the UK.
Moove2London says: Give yourself a head start in finding a job before you even finish uni, by uploading your C.V for FREE to Monster.

Whereabouts in London do you live and what are your living arrangements?
I live in Balham with 2 other blokes – both from Liverpool University. We live in a large Victorian conversion flat. It doesn’t have a garden but we’re really near the Commons so it was great last summer for playing football and chilling out with a few bevvies.
Moove2London says: Not everyone who moves to London gets to live with their existing friends. If you’re moving to London by yourself, then visit Easyroommate to find a flat and flatmates.

How did you find your accommodation?
We called up a few estate agents and 2 out of the 3 of us came down to London one weekend and crammed about 10 property viewings into one day. The one who didn’t come and look at houses with us got the smallest room. Least effort equals box room!

Are you finding London very expensive to live in?
It’s definitely more expensive than Liverpool and York, but I think part of the problem is that as well as moving to London, we have also stopped being students, so student discounts and deals go out of the window. We’ve calmed down a bit now but when we first arrived there were so many different bars and areas of London to explore so we were out after work most nights a week. Then we realised that we couldn’t really afford to live like this, so tend to try and stick to the weekends now!
Moove2london says: Try reading out Affordable London page for tips on how to stick to a budget in London.

What do you love about London?
There’s so much to do, you can’t get bored. Any band you want to see will play in London. There’s loads of comedy, clubs, bars and girls!

Have you had any negative experiences since your move to London?
No, not really. Obviously I read the papers and am aware of crime and stabbings that have taken place in the capital, but luckily I’ve never witnessed or experienced anything bad myself. Touch wood.

How long do you imagine you’ll stay in London for?
I can’t promise I’ll be here until I’m a pensioner, but I’ve no desire to leave in the next 10 years or so.

Survival Jobs in London

When you first move to London as a graduate, or a young professional, you might need to take a survival job whilst you’re looking for a job in your chosen company or industry.

What is a survival job?

A survival job is usually a low-paying and often customer-facing job that a job-seeker would take on a temporary basis in order to cover basic living costs such as rent, bills and food. Jobs falling under the ‘survival jobs’ category could include barwork, shopwork, waitressing, or a basic office admin role.

If you’ve recently finished university, or have been working for a few years prior to your move to London, you may find a survival job to be completely beneath you. You (and possibly your family) might have spent a great deal of money and certainly time on your further education and the last thing you ever envisaged yourself doing with your BA(Hons) degree is to be pouring pints. But try and keep in mind that there are positives to take out of accepting a job that you never expected to have to do.

First of all, the best place you can be living in whilst looking for a job in London is……. London. So if working in a pizza restaurant is a way of supporting yourself whilst going for graduate job interviews, then that’s got to be a lot better than attempting to apply for jobs from your far-flung home location.

As much as many of us dream about giving up work and sitting at home watching Jeremy Kyle all day (no, really), in reality, this is quite a depressing existence. So for the sake of your own sanity, it’s a lot better to get out of the house and into a workplace – any workplace – so that you’re able to keep yourself busy for the day. This can also help combat depression if you’re feeling that this issue is getting too much for you.

You may not want to end up being the regional manager of your local supermarket chain, but there’s a high chance that by doing a survival job, you’ll actually learn skills that you could use in your future dream job. You might be able to learn or develop customer-service skills, touch-typing, a professional phone manner, cash-till operation or new software packages. Try and look for the positive in any survival job that you decide to accept.

Of course, not all survival jobs are going to be suitable for fitting in with your ongoing job-hunting. If you end up working extremely long hours, then you may not have any time to go to job interviews or recruitment agencies. So make sure you know how many hours and shifts you’ll be expected to work before you accept a low-paid job. Also be aware, that some ‘survival jobs’ will pay better than others, so make sure you know the going rate at other companies in a similar industry before you accept anything too menial.

Remember that a survival job is only a temporary measure to help you get on your feet when you first arrive in London. So long as you don’t accept any job that’s illegal or that is against your morals, then you might even find the experience to be positive and rewarding. You could even meet great new friends who find themselves in a similar circumstance to you. In the meantime, upload your most recent C.V and cover letter for FREE to Monster and enjoy doing lots of cheap things that London has to offer.

How much money do I need to move to London?

Following on from our ‘How Much Does It Cost To Live In London’ post last week, we’re now going to answer the next burning question for those of you who are looking to move to London in the near future. That being - 

How much money do I need to move to London?

Whether you will be saving this money yourself or borrowing from parents, or a bank, you’ll still need to budget a certain amount before you consider your move to London.

As with almost everything relating to moving to London, the answer to this question isn’t quite as clear-cut as perhaps you’d hope. It depends on that variable factor of ‘circumstance’, as in your own personal situation. Will you be working at a new job from Day 1 of being in London, or are you looking for work? Do you already have accommodation lined up, or will you require temporary accommodation whilst you look for something more permanent?

Either way, let’s take you through some general approximate costs, so you can work out how much money you’ll need saved up before you move here.

If you move to London without securing a job, then the first thing that you should do is upload your C.V FOR FREE to Monster, as you’ll probably want to start earning money as soon as possible. You can actually start looking for work before you arrive and you should possibly try and line up some interviews with recruitment firms for your first couple of days.

If you have already found your job and have the difficult position of having accepted a job, but have nowhere to stay, then unless you’re lucky enough to stay with friends or family for free, you should book yourself into some temporary accommodation. Dorms are often the cheapest option available for temporary accommodation, but they’re not always the most appropriate, particularly if you want a good night’s sleep the night before your first day at work. So, you could choose a private room at a hostel booked through Hostelworld. You can get a private room for as little as £17 per night. Many of the hostels are located in Central London, which is great because it means that you’ll be more likely to be nearer your workplace and you could even save money on transport at the beginning of your stay in London. If you’re looking for something a little less communal than a hostel, you might want to try Accommodation London who are able to offer an excellent standard of accommodation for as little as £48 per night for a self-contained studio apartment. The apartments are an open planned room with 2/3 single beds or double bed, TV, sofa, table & chairs. They’re fully furnished & fully equipped, everything you need is in the apartment, right down to linen. There is also a shared washer & dryer in most of the buildings.

Let’s say for arguments sake that you spend 2 weeks in temporary accommodation whilst making a real concerted effort to find accommodation of a more permanent nature, perhaps in a shared house. In this case, you’ll require between £238 (hostel room) and £672 (studio apartment) depending on your accommodation preferences. Even if you find somewhere you like on the first day of looking, you’ll often find that it can take a week or so for credit and reference checks to be done on you before you actually ‘get the keys’.

When securing long-term rental accommodation through an estate agent, letting agent or private landlord, it’s normal to expect to hand over 1 month’s rent in advance, plus a damage deposit of between 4-6 weeks. If you consider that the average cost of monthly rent in London is around £450 pcm, then this would mean that you’d be required to hand over £1125 upfront (if the damage deposit is equivalent to 6 weeks rent). Ouch! But try and remember that you’ll hopefully get most of your deposit back at the end of your tenancy so long as you behave yourself!

You’ll also want to budget money for food and transport. Try and budget £40 per week for food and ensure that you eat breakfast and dinner at home and make a packed lunch out of this budget. Transport is a more difficult thing to estimate upfront, as until you’re settled into permanent accommodation, you probably won’t want to commit to purchasing a travelcard yet. In this case, get yourself an Oyster card (see our Transport in London page for details) and top it up with £20 and see how long that lasts you.

Now you’ve got some ideas of how much you’re going to require for your move to London, based on your own personal situation, please make use of all the other resources that our site has to offer to help get you here. You might be interested in our Affordable London page, which has great ideas on how to save money once you’ve moved here.

10 reasons to move to London

Almost everyone that writes about reasons to move to London, trots out Samuel Johnson’s famous utterings –  ’when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’ as if that’s enough of an explanation as to why you should move here. They normally forget to mention the second half of the quotation, which is ‘for there is in London, all that life can afford’. Now the reference to affordability may seem laughable in these economic times, but the gist of London having everything is something we support. Let us prove to those of you with doubts exactly why you should move to London. 

Here are 10 compelling reasons ….

1. Meet new people – there are roughly just shy of 8 million people living in London, not including all of those who commute into the capital for work, so think about all the extra people that you could meet. With Londoners from all walks of life and from many, many different nations, you’ll get to meet some real characters from fascinating backgrounds who can open your mind to the world. London is an extremely sociable city and it’s not difficult to make new friends and settle in, so long as you put in the effort.

2. Eat wonderful food – as mentioned above, London welcomes people from many different countries around the world and therefore, the choice of cuisine is immense. If you’re after a curry, head to Brick Lane; for Italian food, go to Little Venice; for something sweet and sour head to Chinatown; for authentic Persian cuisine, walk down the Edgware Road. This list could go on and on and on…. but you get the idea. We’d go so far as to say that you can find traditional food from any nation in London. If you want to test this theory, leave a comment and we’ll try and find something for you. In the meantime, read the Time Out Eating and Drinking guide for amazing eateries to tempt your tastebuds.

3. Culture – if you’re a culture junkie, then London is the place for you. If you want free museums, art galleries with the latest exhibitions, classical music concerts, theatre productions, poetry readings, then you’ll find it all in the capital. From the Tate to some random function room above a pub, there are a huge selection of art forms for those who enjoy the finer things.

4. Entertainment – whilst there are some excellent venue facilities in other parts of the country, such as the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, or the MEN arena in Manchester, you can’t deny that London attracts the biggest and best names, productions, concerts and sporting fixtures. Tickets may be expensive, but there’s always something going on at the O2 or Wembley to entice you! Visit Viagogo for details of current events.

5. Celebrations - London is always up for a party and enjoys to celebrate the traditions of other countries. We celebrate St Patrick’s Day on March 17th, Australia Day on January 26th, the Chinese New Year, Diwali (often in October or November), Notting Hill Carnival on August bank holiday, as well as our own national days such as St George’s Day on the 23rd April, Christmas and an amazing New Year fireworks display overlooking the Thames. Few places in the rest of the UK could boast that they honour all of these dates in the same way that London does, often with parties in Trafalgar Square.

6. Shopping – Again, there are some wonderful shopping centres and locations in the UK in places such as Leeds and Manchester, but every woman dreams of shopping with a limitless credit card in the boutiques and departments stores of London town. Whether you want to head to an area such as Knightsbridge, Oxford Street, Bond Street, Regent Street or Kensington, a department store such as Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Harrods or a shopping centre such as Westfield, then you’ll love living in London (although your wallet might not!)  

7. Lack of boredom – you can’t be bored in London,  you just can’t be. If you are, then you suffer from a lack of imagination, because you can do anything here. If you wake up on a Saturday morning with no plans for the weekend and think to yourself, ‘I really fancy… going bowling, ice-skating, singing karaoke, going for a riverside walk, taking a boat down the Thames, going paintballing, taking  a trip on the London Eye, watching some comedy, listening to some jazz….’ you get the picture, you can do all these things at the drop of a hat in London. For great ideas of things to do in London, read TimeOut’s 1000 Things to do in London.  

8. Public Transport – ok this may seem laughable, because as with all public transport systems, London’s goes wrong. A lot. However, if you don’t drive and can’t afford to take lessons, have failed your 5th driving test, feel that driving is bad for the environment, or just don’t have any desire to hold a driving licence, then the beauty of living in London, is that there is absolutely no need to have a car. Would it be nice to drive to the supermarket? Yes of course. But is it necessary. Definitely not. The majority of Londoners, even those who drive, use public transport to get to and from work.

9. Move to London for work – thousands of you move to London every year, with work cited as the main reason for the relocation. As with all capital cities, there is an extremely broad selection of industries to choose to work for in London. Many (but not all) will choose to have at least a branch office, but more likely, their company HQ in London. Admittedly if you’re looking for a job in agriculture, then this won’t be the place for you, but industries such as journalism, television, investment banking and global relocation (to name a few) have the majority of job opportunities in London. Read our Working in London page for further details.

10. Love – finally, if you’re looking for love, then why not try finding it in London? There are many, many more single people than in your home towns and a whole host of opportunities to meet a potential love interest. You could try online dating with sites such as Lovestruck London or Single Solution, meet people through friends-of-friends or at work, go speed-dating , or try meeting likeminded people at an event that you’ll be interested in, such as a wine-tasting evening. Read our Dating in London article for tips on meeting someone in the capital.

London Food Delivery Service

When you move to London, one of the first things that you’ll need to do is suss out where the local supermarkets are so that you can get some food in. You’ll find that the closer to Central London you live, the smaller the supermarkets become. You can check out the nearest local supermarkets to a certain area, in the area guides featured on our North London, South London, East London and West London guides.

If you happen to live near a supermarket then great! But there will probably come a time, when for one of many reasons, you require food to be delivered to your door.

Perhaps…..

• You work really long hours and are too tired to cook or go to the supermarkets in whatever is left of your spare time.
• You’re unwell (self-inflicted or otherwise!) and don’t have the energy to go and pick up any food.
• The supermarket is a long walk from your house and you don’t drive, so lugging shopping bags home isn’t your idea of fun.
• When you arrive back from a weekend away, the supermarkets are closed on a Sunday evening.
• It’s past 11pm, you don’t want to go to the pub, but you have run out of alcohol at home.

Whatever the reasons for needing food to be delivered to your house, luckily there are many options available in London.

Supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s will deliver to your door. Simply sign up, type your postcode in and then book an appointment for delivery before you start shopping. The price of the delivery will usually depend on the time you’ve selected and how much you’ve put in your shopping basket.

If you often find yourself underwhelmed by the selection of fruit left on supermarket shelves, then Graze will probably be right up your street. Graze has been created by the founder of Lovefilm.com and allows high quality fresh fruit to be sent through the post to your door. You have the option to either let the team at Graze put a box of fresh fruit together for you, or you can set your preferences if you have a particular dislike to pears. You can also opt to have 3 of your 5-a-day guaranteed in every box. It costs from £2.99 per box with free first class delivery and you get your first box half price when you sign up with Graze for the first time.  

For those with cash to splash and a rich palate, look no further than London Fine Foods. With much of it’s produce found in Harrods, Selfridges or Fortums, you could expect treats such as fresh truffles, caviar, spanish/italian hams or smoked eels to be delivered to your own front door. Pricey it certainly is, but delivery costs start at £6.50 and you’ll be sure to impress a few dinner guests.

Returning now to a moderate-sized wallet and we’ll investigate the world of take-aways! Dominos is the most popular pizza delivery company in the UK; take advantage of their Two-for-Tuesday deal, when you get 2 large or medium pizzas for the price of one.  Just-eat.co.uk is the UK’s largest online food delivery service. Mentioned on Dragon’s Den, this takeaway system requires users to simply type in their postcode and a list of takeaway restaurants in your area will be returned to you. Whether it be Indian or Italian, Chinese or Lebanese, you can view the menus of the takeaway restaurants nearest to you, select your food online and then opt to pay via credit card on the site, or by cash on delivery. Just-eat.co.uk also gives the majority of London postcodes access to a 24/7 alcohol delivery service, which can be extremely useful when you have friends round past 11pm and they’ve guzzled all your booze!

Also delivering booze, is Majestic Wine. The UK’s largest wine retailer offer FREE delivery and are able to deliver on evenings and weekends.

Finally, for those with a sweet tooth, you’ll have surely heard of Thorntons chocolates? Probably, but have you heard of their ‘Treats to Share’ range including ‘Girls Night In’, ‘Just Because’, ‘Cosy Night In’ and ‘Dinner Party Treats’? Well if not, then take a look now!